“I was loving dancing, but then, I got kind of bored with it,” he tells host Justin Sayre in the clip below. Post-9/11 Manhattan, however, was “such a strange time” to be pursuing a new career objective, but nonetheless, Shears connected with musician Scott “Babydaddy” Hoffman.

“We just started hanging out at his place and recording really dumb things that we thought were hilarious,” Shears recalls. Eventually, the two men wrote a new tune, “Bicycling with the Devil,” which they performed at New York’s Slipper Room. “I felt like it would be fun to go out and do something that would make people smile,” he says. It was there they met singer Ana Matronic, and the Scissor Sisters behind hits like “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” and “Let’s Have A Kiki” were born.

Sayre, a writer-performer based in New York and Los Angeles, is best known as the host of “International Order of Sodomites” (I.O.S.) which, for eight years, gathered monthly for “The Meeting,” a variety show honoring gay icons and cultural works.